Immigrant Daily

Make DREAM Real

Here is a repost of an encouraging message from the folks at ilw.com.  They call upon pro-immigrant voices to contact Senators in support of the DREAM bill.  The DREAM bill would enable children of undocumented workers to have a path towards U.S. citizenship by attending college or serving in the U.S. military.

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Make DREAM Real

DREAM may become reality soon. After the CIR debacle, no one thought serious immigration benefits legislation had any chance in 2007. It appears that we might be in for a very pleasant surprise. Sen. Durbin, the Majority Whip and the moving force behind DREAM is reportedly going to get a vote on it as an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that the Senate has been debating for many days now. The rabidly anti-immigration website NumbersUSA (the main vehicle for the antis to influence Congress) has gone on a war against DREAM, and despite its best efforts for a week now, has managed to get only 22 Senators to publicly commit to voting against DREAM (they would need 41 votes to prevail). Mr. Durbin, in response to NumbersUSA’s ferocious campaign has made two minor modifications to his original language, showing that most of the votes for DREAM appear to be there. It is our estimate that DREAM would garner about 70 votes on the floor if a showdown came at this time.

So much for the good news. Now for the rest. Senators who are eager to enact DREAM say that they are getting calls against it by lopsided ratios of 50 against to 1 for. Even a small number of calls and faxes by those in favor would help them better justify a vote against the concerted effort by the antis to bully Congress into a position where voting for benefits becomes impossible. Here’s why everyone who wants immigration benefits, of whatever kind, should care about DREAM. If DREAM succeeds on the Senate floor, there is a whole slew of benefit bills lined up right behind it – SKIL, AgJOBS, you name it. We believe that once the benefits dam breaks in Congress, a flood of benefits will follow. Our best read of the House at this time is that the House Democratic leadership will permit a vote on any immigration benefits to come from the Senate, and we believe that there are plenty of votes on the House floor for targeted benefits like DREAM, SKIL and AgJOBS, etc. That is why DREAM is worth pushing for, even apart from its intrinsic merit, since a veritable cornucopia of benefits may well result in the wake of its success. We urge our readers to support (and get others to support) DREAM through faxes and calls to the Senate. A couple of places to get started are here and here.